Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

Maidenofwar

Maidenofwar

They/Them
I have set it to preclude 4* equipment so I'm not automatically picking up everything and I still end up with so much stuff :mjolnir: Mainly because I have been doing co-op with my streamer friend and another of his viewers we have just been zipping through these dungeons ... it has been hilarious, and chaotic. Might start being even more selective when playing myself though examining green and purple gears when I pick them up then dropping it back down if I don't need or want it. Letting go of the I have to have at least five of everything from everywhere for everyone for fashion mentality will probably help as well :mudkip:

I legit spent like two days trying to defeat Tiamat on Action then the streamer I was watching caught up to that part and well. He was on Story at the time but we still got wrecked the first times because I held back from doing as much so he could get a feel for the fight and see what Tiamat was fully capable of.

Then we played up to defeating the second fiend together, doing side missions as well.

The story is starting to come together well. I like this cast, and yeah Astos is interesting well, can't wait to see what's up there, I do have a theory ?

The mood and atmosphere with the npcs are starting to change as well, as we revive more and more crystals. It's all just starting to tug emotionally. It's great.

Also my main party offline is now
Jack/Neon/Sophia, but if I could it would be Jed/Neon/Sophia or another team with Ash as well. I don't hate Jack or anything but yeah. It's so cool you get to use the other characters in co-op though. I'm having a lot of fun.[/spoiler[

I now have Mage, Black Mage, White Mage and Sage at L30 and am working on Red Mage. I'll also finish working on Swordfighter as well before I start branching into other roles/classes, I'm so curious about everything. I didn't have my Sage levelled when trying to beat Tiamat alone so I might go back and try again.
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
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Smooth Criminal
Holy shit that sounds like fun lol.

I only used co-op for Tiamat the first time in desperation :awesomonster:

I can only imagine playing with friends would make this fun game even more enjoyable. I'm gonna do some more side quests now that I've beaten the game. I have a lot of jobs mastered so I'll easily master them all at this rate.

This game is just extremely fun. Story is good and very enjoyable. It's one of those that just snowballs the more you get in.

Starts off thin but thickens over time like a nice delicious sauce that tops an already fun and delicious dish.
 
Prism

Prism

Pro Adventurer
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pikpixelart
As much as I’m still salty we didn’t get our Amano Action RPG, the fact this is ridiculous antics on steroids makes me want to try it. Like the ridiculousness of Metal Gear Rising (one of my favorite games) applied to Final Fantasy…guess I’ll get it on PS5 version later this week, lol.
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
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Smooth Criminal
The Cornelia Minister is a piece of shit, and not just because he's an asshole to Jack's party...

His fucking fur coat is rendered one strand of fur at at a time, dropping the frame rate of the game precipitously. It's wild. The models and designs looks awesome but they're filled to the brim with Chaos. :wackymonster:
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
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Smooth Criminal
Prism said:
As much as I’m still salty we didn’t get our Amano Action RPG, the fact this is ridiculous antics on steroids makes me want to try it. Like the ridiculousness of Metal Gear Rising (one of my favorite games) applied to Final Fantasy…guess I’ll get it on PS5 version later this week, lol.
Click to expand...

Meant to reply to this earlier.

While the base designs of the main characters obviously aren't Amano influenced, the game features dynamic gear. Their gear dictates their appearance even in cutscenes and lots of the outfits are inspired by Amano designs and classic FF job classes. That's not including the traditional Amano inspired looking side characters and NPCs that exist.

The game is the weirdest and most awesome fusion of classic and modern FF I've seen in a long time. And I fucking love it. It's the kind of fantasy I've loved for a long time.
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
I wish you could dress your characters without influencing stats. Most of the time my guys are dressed like assholes lol. I just wanna use the red mage outfit damn it.
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
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Smooth Criminal
Just keep farming/looting higher levels. You'll get better stat based versions of gear as you play :monster:

Gear really is an abundant resource to the point you'll need to actively stop picking it up lol
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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AKA
Ody
Finished it

As others said, the scene with Astos hit hard. Killing the other party members was also pretty unexpected. I do wish "Chaos" Jack was more of a raw power trip, those goddamn bats still kicked my ass in the Chaos Shrine a few times lol. Unlimited MP was nice, and made the second half of the battle against Chaos a breeze lol.

FF1 is now so much more interesting retroactively. Garland has come a long way from being the guy who will knock us down lol (sad he didn't say it at the end). I wonder how this connects to Dissidia since that's also ostensibly an FF1 prequel, I guess from the Warrior of Light's perspective instead (never played). Kinda makes me wonder if we'll get an FFI-2 where Garland or the WoL go and take on the Lufrenians directly.

All in all, it wasn't as obscenely edgy as I was hoping, but I had a good time.
 
ph14basicbitch

ph14basicbitch

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Odysseus said:
Killing the other party members was also pretty unexpected.
Click to expand...

IMO, the best thing about this particular part is that

the BGM is called "Strangers of Paradise". After Ash says, "We're STRANGERS", I was hoping that at some point we'd get a title drop. Turns out we did get a title drop! Just uhh kind of in a fairly heavy way, considering the fight it accompanies.
 
ph14basicbitch

ph14basicbitch

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koda
asd24i234j2jkl43jk!!!

The 15 some gameplay hours after that scene, when Jack initiates another fist bump but no one is there to return it......................
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
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Odysseus said:
Kinda makes me wonder if we'll get an FFI-2 where Garland or the WoL go and take on the Lufrenians directly.
Click to expand...

Actually, this already happens. :monster:

The ending of SoP shows that thanks to Garland stealing the Crystal Matrix the Lufenians used to reset and cut off World A (FF1s world) from their realm, the power of cyclical time resetting was now his to control. Meaning the Lufenians had no way to control and quarantine that world from their own.

Thanks to Garland sending himself thousands of years into the past along with his 4 friends, the "Four Fiends of Chaos", he is ready to enact his scheme to begin the plot of FF1. All he has to do is bide his time, wait for the chosen time period, and begin his scheme of rejoining Cornelia's kingdom, making a name for himself, and then going rogue. And on the way to that moment in time...

Sophia, as Tiamat, is the first fiend to awaken four hundred years before FF1. From what we know from FF1's plot, she beelines her way to Lufenia's world, decimates them, and tossed the remaining Lufenian civilization into ruin where only a few survivors are left stranded on World A in a small, isolated little town. She then once again chills in the Flying Fortress, sucking the light from the Wind Crystal and waiting to play her inevitable role.

So in the end, they got what they fucking deserved. :awesome:
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
Based. I forgot all about that lol. I need to replay FF1 now. NES version for maximum contrast lol.

I'm typing up a plot summery for my friend, plz review for accuracy:
I'm reminded of when we first learned of the game and you made a joke about how much lore surrounds the first boss of FF1 who was just some rogue knight originally lol. You were so right. If you don't mind spoilers, I'm just gonna summarize the plot here:

Jack Garland is a "Stranger", which is basically an operative from some extra-dimensional society called the Lufenians. He and his friends Jed and Ash are sent to Cornelia to be "Warriors of Light" whose job is to maintain the balance of light and dark in the world. The Lufrenians are basically trying to terraform the world of FF1 into the place where their perfect society would be, and this involves importing locations into it from other dimensions (each dimension is listed by number and obviously corresponds to the same numbered FF game) The memories of the "Strangers" are wiped before going there, and they've been sent countless times as the Lufenians try to perfect the balance. The Lufenians have the ability to reset the world of Cornelia as they see fit, so the Strangers relive the same events again and again. There were two other characters, Neon and Sophia, who were previous Warriors of light who died on previous cycles and became Fake!Garland and Tiamat respectively after they died, but are revived after Jack defeats them, and join the group. Astos, the King of Dark Elves... this guy:
1647964548392-png.12167

is a biologically created servant of the Lufenians who is supposed to help Jack and co. on each loop. This takes a while to come together, but it is revealed that Jack on a previous cycle learned the truth of their situation and started conspiring with Astos to overthrow the Lufenians and break the cycle. The Lufenians are like Spock, all logic and order, so Astos and Jack make a plan for Jack to become Chaos in another Cycle. Jack promises to remember this plan, but he doesn't on future cycles, which causes Astos to become bitter and hateful toward him, (they were gay lovers BFFs in that one loop because Jack recognized Astos' worth as an individual and risked his life for him, so it hurts Astos that Jack doesn't remember) even though he can't blame Jack for forgetting, but ultimately the hate inside him causes him to become a monster which the party has to kill. Only after his death does everyone regain their memories of the plan (the ORBS, er, crystals they brought with were supposed to keep them from remembering, but once they got filled up with darkness Astos was supposed to extract them and send them back to the Lufenians, but since he was conspiring with Jack this time he didn't do that and everyone kept gaining more memories as they killed more monsters). All the Darkness that's released after Astos dies causes monsters to invade Cornelia, and all the citizens die, including princess Sarah (was was kind of a love interest to Jack), and in order to push Jack over the emotional tipping point so he becomes Chaos, the rest of the party starts trying to kill him.He ends up killing them, and his grief causes him to go crazy and gain Chaos powers. The extraction point to return to Lufenia was in the Chaos Shrine, so Jack returns there with the plan to steal their ability to reset time and kill them all. They try to reset time while he's there to stop him, but he uses his darkness powers to break and steal the "crystal matrix" that lets them do it, and all the darkness that's released forms into FF1 Chaos... this guy:
1647964584019.png
Who Jack fights and steals the power of. The Lufenians, in a last ditch effort to rid themselves of Jack, eject the entire pocket dimension he's in and send him back to Cornelia. He leaves them with the cryptic message that they don't need to send any more strangers, which he doesn't explain the meaning of to them. We see him sitting on the throne in the Chaos Shrine, all his dead friends back with him as the four fiends (the ones you killed in the main game are implied to be versions of them from past cycles who were corrupted by the bitterness and hate they felt in death)... these guys:
1647964654763.png
and it seems Jack's new plan to get back at the Lufrenians is to create new Warriors of Light born and raised in Corneria itself rather than some future pocket dimension society, who will be true warriors of light and be able to ACTUALLY save the world instead of just making things worse like his group did. The final scene is Garland sitting on his throne, with the four warriors of light from FF1 (using the Dissidia design for the main one) coming in to face him. And so the grand origin was told... of this guy:
1647964706672.png
And before you think all the extra-dimensional society stuff was new, apparently that also ties into FF1 because the Lufenians are IN that game as the survivors of an advanced civilization that was decimated by Tiamat:
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Lufenia_(Final_Fantasy)
So yeah, Jack got his revenge in the end lol.
 

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Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
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Smooth Criminal
90% accurate, I'd say.

However, Sophia is also a "Stranger."

Only Neon was an attempted "Warrior of Light."

Also, all the sentient races of World A, including humans, elves, and dwarves, were created by the Lufenians. I don't think their meddling in World A is necessarily a "terraforming" project so much as a planet wide experiment in life and evolution, to create races that will best serve the Lufenians' purposes. However, they want to keep World A quarantined from their own world because of the darkness and imbalance these lifeforms create which can infect their own world thanks to their own discovery of the entity known as Chaos.

Which then subtly ties into Dissidia and what we know about the Lufenians there. It's here in the Chaos reports where we discovered that the first time "Chaos" appeared, was when they attempted to create an artificial lifeform of discord and darkness using newly discovered lifeforms originating from the Interdimensional Rift. They raised this lab created creature and made it their superweapon but then it went out of control, ravaged their world and then disappeared back into the Rift. This is why the Lufenians are so deathly afraid of Chaos. It's a lifeform/concept creation born of discord and darkness that cannot be controlled and nearly destroyed the Lufenians before.

Interestingly, Dissidia 012 pretty much showed us that there's essentially two Chaoses. The one that became a "god" in Dissidia, and the one that we know from FF1's main plot.
This shows us how Garland is both simultaneously his own person separate from Chaos but also able to say he becomes Chaos, thanks to basically taking Chaos into himself and making it apart of his being. He absorbed the concept Chaos that was born from World A's darkness and then that's how he's able to become it in FF1.

EDIT:

Odysseus said:
Oh, I suppose the real dangling thread is
Who the collaborator was that the Lufenians are working with and gave them the Crystal Matrix.
Click to expand...


shinryu.jpg

Our lovely Monster-In-A-Box dimensional hopping dragon of doom, Shinryu!

Shinryu did the exact same thing in Dissidia. It made a deal with Cosmos, Chaos, and Cid of the Lufaine who were stranded in the Rift... Letting them generate huge amounts of energy for Chaos to harvest via perpetual war, resetting and reviving their pawns over and over, with the only "cost" being their memories and excess energy syphoned from it all.

It basically shows that Shinryu got this idea of a mutually beneficial arrangement of reviving and dining on energy from the Lufenians.

Dimensional Dragons be HONGRY.
 
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Lulcielid

Lulcielid

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Lulcy
[JP Physical Chart] 'Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins' sold 46,849 physical copies on its launch week

Famitsu sales 3/14/22 – 3/20/22

Software Sales

1. [PS4] Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin – 28,944 / NEW
2. [NSW] Pokemon Legends: Arceus – 23,067 / 2,177,459
3- [PS4] Elden Ring – 19,487 / 293,628
4. [PS5] Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin – 17,905 / NEW
5. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 16,078 / 4,499,542

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1507002978242379778
 
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